North House: Home Embedded Technologies
- Project Type: Interface, Ambient Technology
- Competition: Solar Decathalon [website]
- Duration: 5 Months
- Role: Interaction Designer
Results
Context
Team North, consisting of Simon Fraser University, University of Waterloo and Ryerson University, entered into the international Solar Decathlon competition run by the US Department of Energy. Being one of the top 20 proposals, they proceeded to the next step of planning the details of North House, the name of our house we would build and enter into the final competition. The unique aspect of our house is that on top of efficient and cutting edge technologies, we are also focusing on creating interactive systems that encourages residents to live a sustainable lifestyle. The size of the team on SFU's side fluctuated from 10-20 people.
Process
We began by exploring a range of different ideas by running a design charette in which we invited various students and professors from SFU's School of Interactive Arts and Technology program. This gave us an initial pool of ideas in which we could explore. I was involved in the GUI and the embedded technologies.
Before beginning conceptualization, I met with another designer and discussed how people reinforce or change their behaviors. I created a rough information model mapping out our theory.
I also created an information architecture as to how the systems would interact and how they would be controlled.
Once the team had developed certain concept directions, we began to do some early prototypes and explore the use of different materials. I focused on the "Wallpaper Dashboard" which was a embedded technology that would at a glance indicate statuses of different aspect of the house (ie water usage, electricity usage). We discussed and explored the use of sound, colours, and metaphors to communicate this information in an ambient way.
Upon deciding the use of visual cues, I was able to acquire some thermo-chromatic ink and conductive thread where I tested its usage and effectiveness. Being a competition about energy saving, it was important to minimize the use of energy. Therefore it was important to test the limits of this with the materials we were using.
On the GUI front, I created a journey framework of a typical day listing out which media (television, mobile device, computer) our audience could potentially interact with at specified parts of their day. As our targeted audience was couples, we also indicated points in the day that they would potentially interact and why. We used this exercise to explore a potential day in the life of the residents of our home. The main purpose was to make interactions with the house improve convenience and not add tasks onto their already busy schedules.
Simultaneously, we were working on gathering further information on potential residence of the house and addressing their needs and lifestyles. I was managing a sub-team conducting research on our audience. I prepared questions and conducted an interview with a local family that was deciding to install solar volatics on the house. They also owned a vacation home on an island that was completely off-grid. Our interest was to gather information about their first hand experience with living in a solar house and the decisions that led them to install solar voltaics in their regular home. Information produced from these activities such as the interview and journey frameworks for the GUI was pooled together. The result was a design vision, profiles and mood-boards that helped to ground design concepts across the different sub-teams. This was published in a design specification document that outlined the whats, whys and hows.
A scenario was also created to show how all the technologies would be used in the flow of a daily life.